View full sizeEmily Fuggetta/The OregonianLamar Friesen, a mail carrier in the Rockcreek area north of U.S. 26, collected bags of food donations along his route Saturday during the 20th annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive. The National Association of Letter Carriers asked people across the nation to leave non-perishable food items for their carriers Saturday in hopes of fighting a growing hunger issue in the U.S.

In 32 years as mail carrier, Lamar Friesen has seen plenty of surprises waiting for him at the homes on his routes, from barking dogs to crayon thank-you letters from children.

But once a year, he knows just what to expect.

At nearly every mailbox along his route north of U.S. 26 near Rockcreek on Saturday, Friesen picked up bags full of canned vegetables and meat, peanut butter, fish, boxes of macaroni and cheese, and even dog treats.

Friesen and more than 200,000 other mail carriers in the U.S., including about 4,000 in Oregon, added millions of pounds of food donations to their trucks and bags during the 20th annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive.

"People are always generous out here," he said of the residents on his route, many of whom waved or chatted with him as he paused on the street.

Donations piled in his truck truck faster than the mail cleared out, and Friesen shifted the piles at nearly every stop to avoid an avalanche of parcels, letters and food.

"It's sort of a jigsaw puzzle in the back on donation days," Friesen said.

Now, Friesen pulls his truck up to the suburban boxes on his path, but earlier in his career he needed a cart to carry the donations along his North Portland walking route between stops to the truck.

The annual donation drive, now billed as the largest one-day food drive in the world, began in Eugene in the early 1970s, followed shortly by Oregon City, said Kevin Card, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers' Oregon State Association.

"The carriers in Eugene kept bugging the national office," said Card, who then worked as a carrier in Lake Oswego.

In the early 1990s, the association teamed with national groups focused on hunger prevention and launched a test run of the drive in Oregon and several other states. The following year, the project went nation-wide.

Since then, carriers have collected more than a billion pounds of food. In Oregon, the project drew 1.4 million pounds of food last year in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

But as substantial as the bags of food seem when threatening to topple in packed mail trucks, it's not enough.

Donations are down, and hunger is rising in the Metro area and across the state, according to statistics Rachel Bristol, CEO of the Oregon Food Bank, which coordinates distribution for about 20 regional food banks.

Statistics from the organization show more than 260,000 people each month ate meals from emergency food boxes, and the Oregon Food Bank has spent more than $4.5 million this year to make up for a decrease in donations — the group expects to bring in about 3 million fewer pounds of than last year. The postal drive, she said, will help bridge the gap.

Friesen, who had collected dozens of bags Saturday before his route was halfway complete, said he's thrilled to see his neighborhoods participate because he knows how easily people can fall into hard times.

"I see people who have lost their jobs and can't find work," he said. "I see people struggling and losing their homes."

But once a year, he knows he'll see thousands of yellow bags perched on mailboxes or piled on curbs, and he said he loves the feeling of knowing people are helping one another.

"It's really neat to see so many come together," he said. "I think of the drive as a link in the chain."